


Coffee Chaos

by Dagdoth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universes, Angst and Humor, Comic References, F/M, Graphic Description, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Sorry, Imma screw this OC so hard she'll see plot out of her mouth, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mind-fuckery, POV Female Character, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, Warning: No Happy Ending, like stupidly slow burn, not sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dagdoth/pseuds/Dagdoth
Summary: In which a woman from our universe is thrown into a pseudo-Earth-199999 and attempts to make sure the MCU stays on course. Loki does his best to mess that up, spectacularly.Edit: This will probably start updating again when Loki Miniseries comes out.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel) & Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel) & Reader, Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Coffee Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a beta-reader, so if you see any errors that standout like a sore thumb let me know and I'll correct it! Enjoy!

Lately, I feel the funky coming over me

I don’t know what’s gotten into me

The rhythm’s got me feeling so crazy,

Babe.

(Beyonce - Naughty Girls)

Life is full of choices. 

What to wear for the day, what to eat, drink; drive to work, walk, or bike? 

The amount of choices that can be made from day to day, every hour, minute or second is _exponential._ But does one choice affect the future? Say you decide to drink coffee that morning, do you drink it before you leave or in the car? You might drink at home and burn your tongue or you might drink on the road - - and spill scalding hot coffee over your thighs, swerve into oncoming traffic, and then die upon impact with a semi.

So many _choices_.

Lydia doubts that if she’d drank that coffee at home she’d be here.

And she’s _not_ referencing her job as a stripper at a gentlemen's club, although, considering the circumstances, that aspect is included.

Lydia curses beneath her breath, raising frosty fingers to cup her mouth. Her breath is nearly visible in the air backstage, rising in puffs. Someone should fix the heating unit - it’s the middle of winter in New York City and temps are near freezing - goosebumps prickle her arms and legs, and she can’t feel her toes in her outrageous purple pumps. 

She’s from the midwest, and the northern in her wants to say, “ _buck up, deal with it, it’s not_ that _cold,”_ it’s _just_ the low thirties - she’s seen temperatures at negative _forty,_ a seventy degree difference!- but in the lavender lace babydoll it might as well be that cold. Her nipples are like diamonds and she shivers uncontrollably. 

“Ooh, girl, you better be ready,” _Stardust_ warns as she stomps off stage, pulling the outrageous platinum wig from her head. “The rail is full of rocks!” She scowls. “I hope you have something hot planned.”

“Nothing more than usual,” but the promise of money has Lydia with itchy fingers. How long has it been since she’d eaten something other than rice, beans, or ramen, like a fresh college student? Too long - weeks maybe. Her overpriced, rundown, (piece of shit) pay-by-the-week apartment would be a lot more welcoming with a full fridge.

Lydia started dancing in elementary school, tap, jazz, ballet, not for any reason in particular, more of a reason for her to be out of the house so her mother could have boyfriends over, but it was a fun endevor and she’d continued far into college. She’d never expected to use that experience for _this,_ but it wasn't like she could use her now non-existant degree for work.

On the main stage, with the blinding green neon-lights jerking across the crowd in dizzying paterns, people are little more than faceless shapes. Lydia isn’t a people person to begin with, she’s introverted, doesn’t like public speeches, but as long as she’s not talking she can pretend that the people below don’t exist. 

She only hopes the men at the rail aren’t the rocks _Stardust_ talked about. She doesn’t want ramen again.

The music is loud, but it has a nice beat, something new by Beyonce ( _it's nice that some things are the same)._ Lydia grips the freezing aluminum pole and regrets again her attire, no matter how tempting the diaphanous material makes her curves look. 

She’s two swings in and arching over when a familiar face catches her eye. She doesn’t look at people, not really, eye-to-eye contact isn’t her preference, but he sticks out like a sore thumb to her, no matter how well he tries to blend in. Tall, tan, handsome, dark stubble that hasn’t seen a shave for two days. Her stomach drops into her belly. Had she been anyone else, he would have been just a face in the crowd of patreons, one many of the girls wouldn’t mind working over. 

_Agent Ward was, after all,_ everyone’s _type._

Lydia feels sick, feels vomit roil as memories of binge watching netflix roll behind wide eyes. Memories, of a life that is no longer hers. 

_He’s not here for me,_ is all she can think, as her nerves turn her knees to jelly under Agent Ward’s unfaltering gaze. _He’s just relaxing._ She tells herself, even though never _once_ on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had they alluded to Agent Ward having a preference for strip clubs. In fact, she was quite sure he didn’t _have_ the time. Not at their current plot-location.

Her cheeks are red, looking at him, and he must have mistook the blush for lust rather than the crippling fear it is, because he smiles like the cat at the canary, dark brown eyes crinkling. Another turn of the pole is all she can do to get away, heart hammering in her chest. As she scales and falls again, arching, there’s a Benjamin on the rail and those dark brown eyes are all eyes for her. 

_This isn’t_ happening _._

She can’t be _rude_ . It might come off as _unnatural._ He might get the jist that _she knows who he is… who he_ actually is _._

“All for me?” her smile is weak, twitches at the corner of her lips as she slips the money from the floor and into the strap of her bra with practiced ease. He's just another customer.

“It _can_ be all for you,” there're more hundreds - a quick flash from calloused fingers - and another just as charming smile. “You do anything extra?”

_Extra_. It’s laughable, really. 

The other girls tease her for being such a _prude._ She can’t even stand the slightest touch from any _John_ on the floor, that’s why she’s up here, all looks with no touches. In fact, she can already feel _Candy’s_ eyes rolling on the side stage. 

But she has a feeling Ward won’t take no for an answer.

“What were you thinking of?” she sighs, ignoring the horrible twisting in her guts, the acid burning the back of her throat. She’s crawling back towards the pole, has her leg hitched against the steel cold metal.

“A lap dance,” Ward says with unerringly practiced ease, that smile is wider, curling, thinking he’s pegged her down, that his good looks and boyish charm have already reeled her in. The horrible part is that it would have, in another life, if it was the actual Brett Dalton. 

Not that she would have ever been _caught_ working at a strip club.

Her smile is forced, but natural enough, she thinks, to pass as agreement; she bites her lower lip, just in case it isn’t, just in case the panic she feels in her quaking limbs breaks free. “I’ll see you offstage, backroom zero-nine.” It’s the one furthest from the back. Furthest away from her.

Time is a wonderful and horrible thing. She hopes the song never ends, hopes her feet break themselves in her heels and hopes she dies ( _but she’s done that once before, hasn’t she?_ ) before anything of the sort can happen. But the song _does_ end, and time _does_ move on. She can’t bring herself to look at that smug mug.

Backstage, behind the curtain, _Candy_ is snickering beneath a wig green as the lights on the floor. “You actually gonna go?”

“No,” is her curt reply, a little _too_ curt in her panic. “You should go though, not often they’re cute.” 

“Hmm, she’s not lying,” _Stardust_ agrees, peeking around the curtain. “If you won’t take him _I_ will.” 

Lydia is already flying away through the backroom, snatching bills from her ass crack and shoving them in the pockets of her ragged hand purse on the counter. The only thing that goes through her mind is _that they know._

Somehow they know.

Like _hell_ she's going to go to the backrooms.

The emergency exit door slams open a little _too_ vigorously in her exit into the dark downtown back alley. Lydia left her coat behind, but it’s fine - there should be a taxi just on the mainstreet (always is for the late night clubbers) and from there she can get to her apartment (it’s only a few blocks away). Should she even go there? Wouldn’t they have the place stak-

There's a dark car sitting there, _in the alley_ , and an Agent ( _she_ _horrifyingly recognizes)_ standing before it.

“Do you want a lap-dance too?” Lydia blurts out. Sweat pools at the nape of her neck, clammy and cold in the already too chill air. Internally, she’s screaming. 

“Unfortunately, this visit isn’t for pleasure,” Phil Coulson, Humanities Shield, god-bless, does not mention her mortification. _Or_ her state of undress, eyeing her sparkling violet garter straps with a raised eyebrow before fixing that steady stare on her face. He merely clears his throat, and gives a tight lipped smile to her panicked question before pulling a badge from his jacket. 

_-They know, they know, they know-_

“Agent Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division,” and she has to bite her tongue, _hard_ , just _has too_ , to prevent words flying out her mouth - “I’ll have to ask you to come with me.” 

* * *

Lydia’s blindfold is pulled off inside her designation by Agent Coulson after a very quiet ride and short walk beyond a ramp, which she’d maneuvered with some difficulty due to her heels and her wrists cuffed awkwardly behind her back.

Truely, Lydia is not surprised to see the softly blue lit hexagonal walls surrounding her on all sides and the sad gray table with two equally sad metal chairs on either side. Instead, she feels like she’s watching this all happen to someone else, someone who is not her, because this could not be real. If it weren’t for her pounding heart or the twinge of headache between her ears, she could have pretended. 

Until tonight, Lydia could still write off the Avengers and all related plotlines to TV-shows, since that’s the closest she’d gotten. But now it’s before her, and reality. 

“Sorry for the rough transport, but we like to be thorough,” Agent Coulson says, unlocking her wrists. As he steps before her, Lydia rubs her chafed wrists.

He motions to an empty chair. “Have a seat.” 

“I feel like I shouldn’t,” Lydia squeaks. Her mind is running a hundred miles a minute, tongue in her throat. _She shouldn’t be here._ Her eyes are on the door behind him, still open, wondering her chances of making a run, there’s no one at the door, as far as she could see-

_-She’s on the plane, it’d do no good, maybe they’re already in the air, maybe they’re-_

“-You’ll find running in those shoes a tad difficult, I believe,” his smile is still tight lipped, and although his eyes are all business, Lydia feels so, _so_ dirty. Coulson had always had this _dad_ vibe to her. 

This is mortifying.

Awkwardly, arms around her copiously spilling breasts, Lydia sinks into the seat, unable to stop the horrible blush turning her tomato red. At least she was facing him forwards now - - her ass is basically bare.

Agent Coulson surveys her a moment longer, decisive, meticulous.

All Lydia can do is stare. 

Receding hairline, the aging features, the sharp eyes and calm demeanor- in her own world, she could pretend that she were at comic-con, at a booth with the actor Clark Gregg doing his best. She sees the man she’d watched portray the best-of-the-best, but not the agent himself. She’s dreaming again, she thinks, not for the first time since arriving... _here_ . This is _merely_ a very _interactive_ booth with a full-time stripper being actively interrogated by Phil Coulson like a scene ‘outta a bad fanfiction. 

The hysterical giggle is out of her mouth before Lydia can help it, and it takes a long time to calm herself, time enough for the agent to sit before her, hands clasped. 

“Any idea why you’re here?” 

“Not for _extras_ ,” is all she manages. 

Crows feet at the edges of the agent’s eyes crinkle slightly, “take a shot.”

And her eyes are edging the doorway again, mauling her lower lip with sharp teeth, wondering if Agent Ward is standing just around the corner, already out _Candy_ ’s clutches and back to the helicarrier, wondering if Agent May is instead, wondering if _somehow_ , in these _ridiculous shoes_ , she’d be able to dart past Agent Coulson and escape. It’s an equally ridiculous thought, _really_ , to think she would get more than a few feet. He’s a trained field operative, and Lydia, well, she already knows how guilty she looks, giving Ward the slip, already knows that Agent Coulson can probably read her body language like he’s reading a recipe for butterscotch cookies. She’s no _field agent_ , she’s an _exotic dancer, for Christ’s sake._

But she’s told herself since day one - that the smallest, most insignificant detail could derail _everything._

And she doesn’t want to be responsible for that.

Her life and 50% of the universe depends on it.

_But how does she know this is Earth-199999 and not another? It_ must _be another, because she’s here and that-_

“Not a clue,” Lydia says slowly before she can complete the thought that would send her crashing into a further crisis, as it did whenever she really sat and thought about her situation. 

- _changes everything she could possibly depend on to keep her alive._

Her answer is an obvious lie, and Agent Coulson is equally unimpressed by the sparkle in his eye - playing coy isn’t going to get her in his good graces. 

“Eleven months ago, multiple computer searches were made from The New York Public Library. Every single one referencing Wrigley Pennsylvania and three deceased firemen. Before it happened I'll add, and as soon as those searches got a hit, the searches stopped. SHIELD found this _odd_. And the deeper we looked more of the same.” 

_Lydia just wanted to know - - she’d just wanted to know the exact time point. Public deaths,_ reported _deaths, those were locatable._

Coulson leans forwards, forearms on the table and fingers woven tight, “I must admit, it did take us a while to track you down through so many proxies, but unfortunately for you and fortunately for us we have a master hacker on our team.” A smile touches his cheeks, “and also, cameras are still a thing - - anything you’d like to add Skye?” 

“No _pe_ ,” Skye says ( _not Daisy_ yet) as she enters, popping her tongue in a childish manner. “Only that you look _good_ girl!” 

“Thanks,” Lydia manages, choking words and squeezing herself all the more together as tightly capped panic rises in her chest. “Not eating is a good diet regimen.”

Skye laughs, and a genuine smile curling her lips, “Yea, that would do it. Your informants not paying enough?”

“Do I look like I have _informants_ ?” And as an afterthought, “can I at least have a jacket if we’re going to play _good cop bad cop?_ My ass is freezing.”

Skye let out a very _unlady-like_ -snort, yet Coulson, ever the professional, didn’t even bat an eye. Lydia knew who the _bad-cop_ was already, and for all his stoicism, she was quite sure his mind was working miles a minute. And for all his good intentions, she also knows that he’s very much an Agent of SHIELD and that spells horrible things for her with the entirety of the plotline still before her (and at this point, in complete jeopardy). 

“Who knows I’m here?” she asks tentatively, looking directly at Coulson with an amount of courage she didn’t think she had. 

“And why do you care about that?” is his non answer, relaxed, surveying. 

Skye, for her part, is listening. Good on her.

Lydia can only worry her lip. What she wants to answer is ‘ _because SHIELD is actually HYDRA, and Agent Ward is HYDRA and I know everything that is going to happen until 2023 because I’m from an alternate reality where everyone is part of a crazy movie lineup that millions across the world watch. Also, in five-years there’s a 100% chance that half the life in the universe will just cease to exist because Mr. Purple Clean got a little too aggressive with his bleach glove and me surviving is dependent on the Avengers following the correct timeline.’_

But, telling Agent Coulson that would do no good, and would likely corrupt said timeline. 

_She’s going_ mad _in the head_. She just needs a minute, one minute to work her mind around this-

\- but it's _not stopping._

Coulson doesn’t wait for an answer, leaning forwards. “I must admit, your undercover work is some of the best I’ve ever seen. A ghost - you don’t appear in any media, or hardly, I should say, until those searches. There’s no record of you, your parents, siblings, birthdate, ID-” a laugh escapes her before she can reel it back, clasping hands over her mouth before her roiling stomach follows. Coulson pauses - it must have sounded unhinged, even to him, but he presses on, a tad softer. “Not even a name.”

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Lydia was never supposed to be here. _Lydia doesn’t exist._

There’s tears in the corners of her eyes, her throat is tight, hot, Skye shifts uncomfortably on the sideline as Agent Coulson stares her down, unmoved. 

“So tell me, why do you care about who knows you’re here?”

And he won’t let it rest. Of all the lines of questioning, he intrinsically knows the one question to break her, even if it’s meant in a different fashion. 

_No one knows she’s here. No one that mattered to her… before all this._

It was all her fault. She should have drank that coffee at home. 

The first sob behind hands leaves her breathless, a chink in her armor that breaks and crumbles as easily as an old scab. The second she chokes on.

Three months since the _Convergence._ No one knows she’s here.

The third she manages to swallow back. 

She’s a smear on asphalt in her own universe.

There isn’t a fourth. 

She feels _exhausted_ suddenly, slumping, even though she is used to working late (early morning, really), her body feels like a bag of wet sand. Lydia wants nothing more than to curl up into a little ball and rock herself to sleep or for the ridiculous hexagonal walls to collapse and swallow her whole.

There’s gooseflesh across her chest now and for the life of her she can’t meet Coulson’s ever composed gaze as she shivers. She hopes and assumes the only people aware of her are Coulson’s team, since Coulson has full authority over their mission objectives at this point in time. Maybe Fury.

Skye jerks a thumb over her shoulder, “I’ll go get-”

-A long time ago, Lydia had watched Star Gate ( _is that even a thing here?_ ), not as obsessively as she had with the MCU franchise, but she’d watched it, and enjoyed it. She would never forget the first time she’d watched the gate open, the collision of the portal’s boundary with air as both fronts met and physics fought.

This was a lot like that, but faster, no warning or anticipation of a slow meticulous dial, just the smell of ozone and blinding blue light as reality folded in on itself like origami paper.

And a hand like an iron shackle curling around her upper arm. 

“There you are,” a sinuous voice purrs as if finally finding a lost but much needed object, and to Lydia’s horror, she _recognizes the voice._ There's no time to look, even as Agent Coulson jerks to his feet, chair clattering, snatching for her- although she does not know what in the seven hells is happening 

There is a terrible recognition in Coulson’s alarmed gaze, only confirming her horror.

\- No no no no no-

Her fingers brush his, curl, and grasp _thin air_ as she’s yanked to her feet and back through that gate of blue light and curling matter into darkness, chair and all, and the portal is zipped neatly shut, leaving her to stare at a completely alien room.

-Just one moment, she just needs one moment to get her bearings-

The hand curled around her upper arm releases and Lydia sways momentarily on her feet like a newborn fawn before sinking to her knees on warm bricks, aghast. 

-This wasn't cannon _at all_ -

Her second kidnapper steps before her and laughs lowly at her terrified expression. "You _know_ me. It appears I have summoned well." 

Loki of Asgard, the Silver Tongued, Son of Odin and of Laufey, God of Lies, stands tall before her, the tesseract in hand. 

And she knows with all certainty this universe is doomed.


End file.
